Customer Rating:  
Summary: Solid material, if somewhat dated...
Comment: Target Audience
Beginning JavaScript coders.Contents
This is a conversational tutorial on JavaScript coding designed for people who have not used the language much (or at all). The book is divided into the following chapters: Welcome To JavaScript!; Using Variables and Built-in Functions to Update Your Web Pages Automatically; Give The Browsers What They Want; Rollovers: Everyone's Favorite JavaScript Trick; Opening and Manipulating Windows; Getting Functional: Writing Your Own JavaScript Functions; Giving and Taking Information With Forms; Keeping Track of Information with Arrays and Loops; Timing Events; Frames and Image Maps; Validating Forms, Massaging Strings, and Working with CGI; Cookies; Dynamic HTML; How to Fix Broken Code; Beyond the Browser: Plug-ins, ActiveX, Making Music, and Java; Reference to JavaScript Objects and Functions; Answers to Assignments Review
There are numerous books on the market that deal with learning JavaScript. There is everything from simplistic guides to the person building their first web page, to in-depth guide for the professional web developers, to detailed reference guides that document every feature. On that scale of coverage, this book falls somewhere on the lower end of the scale. That's not a bad thing... It's just good to know what the target audience is. The tone of the author's writing is conversational and a little quirky. He uses a number of examples in each chapter to illustrate the subject matter, and they illustrate the points well. Each example is dissected so that the reader can follow along and understand what each line is doing. By the time you are finished, you should have a solid understanding of the basics of JavaScript. At that point, you should be ready to pick up a more detailed book and start learning the intricacies of the language. The only bad thing about the book at this point in time is the age of the book. He assumes that the reader is working with either Netscape 3.0 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0. On one hand, most of the stuff you see here should be supported now in any browser. On the other hand, there's something to be said for learning the latest information on more up-to-date platforms. The age also shows up when you examine some of their web site samples. Obviously, the sites have been updated since the book was written, so you can't very well follow along any more. Conclusion
A solid, if somewhat dated, tutorial treatment of basic JavaScript coding. Easy to read, and very good explanations of code examples.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very practical for beginners but somewhat dated
Comment: I just picked this one up because I was looking to juice up a website I've been working on. The first couple of hours I spent with it were golden. I learned a lot of what I was interested in knowing quite quickly. One thing that struck me, however, was how dated it was - the author likes to reference real world websites but every real world example that I looked up online had been completely redesigned since this book was published in 2000.
The book also spends a somewhat annoying amount of time discussing differences between browsers like Netscape 2.0 and IE 4.0... Netscape is currently at version 7.0, IE is at 6.0. Dealing with the different browsers and the way they render java was much more of an issue three years ago (although it definitely still is an issue b/c pesky microsoft likes monopolize everything did its best to turn java into something that could only be compatible with IE). Point being his discussion of this issue is dated.
Anyway, the book is well written and the author is not a tech head looking to show off how complex his field is. The book puts things forward practically (as the subtitle suggests it should) and the result is if you are a java novice and you want to add java functionality to your website, this book provides the answers in a way that is aimed more at the bottom line of getting that functionality into your website and less at providing you with a big picture understanding of java.
To summarize, this book, aside from being somewhat dated, is a very well organized guidebook for someone who wants a working understanding of the elements of java that suit their basic purposes. It is not for someone looking to become a real java maven.
Customer Rating:
Summary: awesome book!
Comment: This is a great book for anyone beginning, halfway through, or an expert on JavaScript. Thau explains everything simply and gives good tips as well. Just a warning however. One of the files in the "1st page" editor (ON THE INCLUDED CD-ROM) shows up as a worm on an anti-virus scanner. Something called "Seven Buttons from Hell"or something to that effect. Other than that, fantastic book!
Customer Rating:
Summary: awesome book!
Comment: This is a great book for anyone beginning, halfway through, or an expert on JavaScript. Thau explains everything simply and gives good tips as well. Just a warning however. One of the files in the "1st page" editor (ON THE INCLUDED CD-ROM)shows up as a worm on an anti-virus scanner. Something called "Seven Buttons from Hell"or something to that effect. Other than that, fantastic book!
Customer Rating:
Summary: overall, a very good book.
Comment: This book was very good for what it was intended to be, a gateway into javascript. Ofcourse one will not find every detail of javascript in this book. It was designed for the newbie. Every topic was well written and easily understood. The only problem I had with it was the part about functions. Using this as my first real programming language, I didn't know the fundamentals. The book did not describe how functions worked very well, hence why I have it a rating of a 4 and not a 5. It was not untill I learned some c++ that i understood functions and was able to come back and relearn all the javascript. all in all the book was VERY good and I HIGHLY recomend it to any newbie to javascript or to programming. (ofcourse javascript requires a good understanding of html Before you learn javascript, that was my disclaimer incase and real newbies were reading.
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